Pocket-lint has a rumour up that Facebook is interested in acquiring Opera to kickstart their own move into the browser market, to compete with Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft. While it would mean much-deserved recognition for Opera, I actually hope such a deal does not go through - for entirely selfish reasons.

But so many people have strong opinion against Opera because it was a paid/ad browser in the 90's and because it isn't opensource. This is partly why it is only 1% of the market even after 20 years. But they are well established on the mobile market.

"So many people" are mostly hardly aware of Opera - and even less would care about the OSS aspect, or remember that it was paid / adware.

(well established in mobile - where most of growth is yet to happen; oh and in most of CIS as a desktop browser)